My homemade electric vehicle

Dear Editor,

There is a lot of talk about electric vehicles that are coming to the market soon such as the Chevy Volt, Audi electric, etc. At $100,000 a pop, current electric vehicles such as the Tesla Roadster are simply too costly for the average consumer. Many people, like myself, have taken it on ourselves to build our own electric vehicle instead of waiting for an affordable electric vehicle.

My first attempt at electrifying a vehicle is on a reverse trike. A trike is a three-wheeler, two wheels in the back, one in the front. A reverse trike has two wheels in front, one in the back. The trike is powered by a 48-volt DC shunt mount motor rated at four horsepower. Three 12-volt batteries supply DC power to the motor and are controlled by a 36-volt Curtis controller. The Curtis controller basically pulses the battery power that is supplied to the motor through a 5,000-ohm potentiometer (variable resistor). The potentiometer is mounted on the handle bar and is controlled by the thumb.

One of the reasons I decided to electrify a trike is that it’s an open-air vehicle much like a motorcycle, but it does not require balancing. The power-to-weight ratio of a trike is close to a race car, so the performance is much better than a typical car. It’s a lot of fun to ride around.

A key feature of this trike is that 90 percent of the parts are reused. The fenders are from old rain barrels. The motor is from an electric forklift that was deemed fit for the junkyard. The controller came from an old electric golf cart. Batteries are from a computer UPS (uninterruptible power supply). Cables are used from an industrial company. Frame came from a Honda 750, old bed frame, and some new DOM (drawn over mandrel) tube steel. The front tires and wheels came from a race Acura. The speedometer is actually an airspeed indicator from a Cessna.

To me there is no such thing as junk. Imagine, if you will, living in a spaceship. You cannot throw anything out to space and you cannot take anything in; whatever you produce will stay with you in the spaceship. We live on this spaceship, it’s called Earth. Whatever junk we produce we have to recycle-put to good use in the next reiteration of its life. This trike is a example that it can be done-we can make something out of so-called junk.

It took me about six months to scrounge around for parts and one year to build the trike. There is a wide range of expertise one would need to build an electric vehicle: welding, electrical, mechanical, hydraulics, pneumatics, project management, plus a lot of perseverance and ingenuity.

The final cost was $800. This trike has been ridden the whole summer of 2009, mainly in Bay View, but it’s made a few trips between downtown Milwaukee and Bay View.

This trike does not produce any tailpipe emissions, does not need any gas station, but the most wonderful thing is that it is totally silent. It takes six hours to charge this trike using the mains and it can be ridden around for 20 miles.

Swee Sim

Future Green, Bay View

Sim tells the Compass at least three people have expressed interest in him building them a similar trike, which is licensed as a moped. If 10 or more people expressed serious interest, he said he could get a factory to make the frame and he could assemble the vehicle.

Copyright 2010 by Bay View Compass. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.